Speaker 1: The other problem here, though, is another a concept called interpassivity.
Speaker 1: Zorin could put us into this interpassive state where, because
Speaker 1: the problem is, you know, this spectacle of him winning
Speaker 1: could be taken as you, oh, great, I don't need
Speaker 1: to do anything anymore. I don't need to get out
Speaker 1: there and support him because he's going to do my
Speaker 1: anti capitalism for me. And whether or not he does
Speaker 1: is obviously just a question that has to be left
Speaker 1: to the future. But it goes to the broader point
Speaker 1: that when you have fascism, when you have communism, you
Speaker 1: need propaganda with those things you need to argue, but
Speaker 1: capitalism doesn't need you to believe it works for it
Speaker 1: to work. And apparently, according to this argument, fascism and
Speaker 1: communism are things that require you to believe them to
Speaker 1: work for them to work. So in capitalism and capitalist
Speaker 1: realism you can have this state where I don't believe
Speaker 1: money is real, but I act as if it is,
Speaker 1: or I don't believe this works, but I act as
Speaker 1: if it does work. Right, you get into this capitalism
Speaker 1: capitalist realism is this unique situation that produces that, and
Speaker 1: the danger of interpassivity is, you know, whenever any spectacle
Speaker 1: comes along like Zorin winning or the Squad winning, or
Speaker 1: Bernie gaining ground.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The danger is that it can relax us into passivity
Speaker 1: because it's, like we see, it's obviously the media system
Speaker 1: that we're not going Unless you're going in person to
Speaker 1: their rallies and hearing them speak, you're probably getting this
Speaker 1: information from the media. So you have a spectacle of
Speaker 1: anti capitalism and you relax and say everything's good, and
Speaker 1: you pay attention to something else. Hello, pillpods listeners. Today
Speaker 1: we're picking up on a topic we actually covered a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago now, I guess it was so
Speaker 1: I can't even remember when we did our last episode
Speaker 1: on Mark Fisher, when we did Exiting the Vampire Castle.
Speaker 1: That was a bit a bit of a different angle.
Speaker 1: But today we're going to capitalist realism, something I've wanted
Speaker 1: to read for quite a.
Speaker 3: While and.
Speaker 1: Never never done it. It's not even that long. I
Speaker 1: don't know, why have you never?
Speaker 3: Was this your first time reading it?
Speaker 4: Eric?
Speaker 1: It actually is, Yeah, I'm really yeah. I missed out
Speaker 1: on a few texts I know, and I claim to
Speaker 1: be knowledgeable about the sort of British Marxism type of stuff,
Speaker 1: but I guess this is one of the ones I missed.
Speaker 2: It's like one of the only theory books that anybody
Speaker 2: has ever read. I know it is. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 2: the kind of theory book that gets a lot of
Speaker 2: people into theory. They're like, I think I can read
Speaker 2: theory now, and then they read Jamison They're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I give up.
Speaker 4: There's probably a good chance that many of our listeners
Speaker 4: and may have this might be the only theory book
Speaker 4: that they've read.
Speaker 1: Perhaps yes, oh yeah, everyone can school me on it
Speaker 1: because that's my first run through. But I mean his
Speaker 1: style is quite familiar, right, Like it is kind of eclectic,
Speaker 1: bringing in very different topics from pop culture, economics, politics,
Speaker 1: and drawing on like psychoanalysis.
Speaker 4: And also if it's if it's not obvious already, we're
Speaker 4: joined again by Tony from the one Time YouTube channel
Speaker 4: and the One Time radio.
Speaker 3: Podcast to talk about this.
Speaker 4: So I just want to get that, make that clear
Speaker 4: so the listeners are aware of what's happening.
Speaker 1: I know I'm blowing this introduction.
Speaker 2: I'm the substitute teacher, the substitute yeah, guest host at
Speaker 2: this phase. Treat me well.
Speaker 3: Tony is a guest host, meaning we're.
Speaker 1: Going to put on a film for you for m's
Speaker 1: going to be the class today.
Speaker 2: Is a teacher? Yay.
Speaker 1: Actually Fisher does talk about teaching quite a bit because
Speaker 1: I guess he is a teacher or was a teacher, sorry,
Speaker 1: and he drew a lot of stuff on his experience.
Speaker 2: What was it?
Speaker 1: It was almost like a continuing education he taught in.
Speaker 1: It was like almost like an alternative oh yeah, school
Speaker 1: system where like working class families or people who didn't
Speaker 1: fit into the mainstream British school system, which I'm not
Speaker 1: familiar with at all, could sort of send their kids there.
Speaker 2: And I think it was more like the British equivalent
Speaker 2: of community college. Oh yeah, yeah, kind of what he taught.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right right, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: I was I was also going to say, it's before
Speaker 4: Tony got here and before we started recording, Eric and
Speaker 4: I were sort of noticing that there's you know, it's
Speaker 4: it's funny that in the Exiting of the Vampire Castle
Speaker 4: he talks very like praisingly about Russell Brand, who I
Speaker 4: think was for a time like authentically a pretty left
Speaker 4: wing guy, like talking about working class issues. And then
Speaker 4: I also added the fun fact maybe even some of
Speaker 4: you who have listened have actually listened to the audiobook
Speaker 4: of Capitalist Realism because it is actually read by Russell
Speaker 4: Brandt in the audiobook.
Speaker 1: In the audio, he's the narrator. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: Russell brand crossed the Aisle not long ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it was always genuine. I mean, and he
Speaker 1: was a bit again on like the more British cultural scene.
Speaker 1: He was big and until he got into those big movies.
Speaker 4: But he's trying to find some self reflective answers.
Speaker 1: I don't know that's in the sexual harassment stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he probably, I don't know. He exited the Vampire Castle,
Speaker 1: but he turned right.
Speaker 4: So what's the So maybe we should just get like
Speaker 4: the core thesis of the book on the table. I
Speaker 4: don't know if either of you kind of have. I
Speaker 4: mean I can kind of give it a shot if
Speaker 4: you want. But Eric, did you like a have a
Speaker 4: way into the core thesis and maybe also why you
Speaker 4: wanted to read it, because in this case, Eric actually
Speaker 4: chose the topic.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I suggested getting back to this text because
Speaker 1: again it was one I feel I'm feeling the guilt
Speaker 1: of not having read it, even though it's such an
Speaker 1: obvious thing to read. When you're in this area of anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so capitalist Realism. I wanted to read it at this
Speaker 1: time too because of Zorin's win and the kind of
Speaker 1: I think it seems to me like the mainstream establishment
Speaker 1: democrats at least are like those today who are most
Speaker 1: under the influence of capitalist realism, because you kind of
Speaker 1: have like the anti establishment right that seems to have
Speaker 1: taken over and I don't know what they I don't
Speaker 1: know how they would fit into the capitalist realist argument.
Speaker 1: Maybe they do, maybe you disagree, but they seem to
Speaker 1: be not there. And then Zorin also seems to be
Speaker 1: kind of like an anti capitalist realist challenge from within anyway.
Speaker 1: It's just it was just an opportunity to use some
Speaker 1: theory to meditate on an interesting development in democratic politics
Speaker 1: in the United States as outside observers and capitalist realism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just very basically, Yeah, it's the subtitle
Speaker 1: the book, right is is there no alternative? Which is
Speaker 1: asking that question. That's rephrasing Margaret Thatcher's famous line, there
Speaker 1: is no alternative, Tina, there is no alternative to capitalism,
Speaker 1: and today that problem seems to be very dominant, especially
Speaker 1: after the fall of the USSR. Right, He's like, you know,
Speaker 1: at least in the eighties, you know, there was a clear,
Speaker 1: actual alternative to capitalism. We say, Okay, you can just
Speaker 1: point to I don't know why everyone suddenly forgets about
Speaker 1: China after nineteen eighty nine, as if they stop being
Speaker 1: communists somehow, But okay, anyway, the fall of the USSR.
Speaker 1: Now there's no alternative, like for real it seems. And
Speaker 1: you could argue China's pretty plugged into the global capitalist
Speaker 1: market despite its avowed communism.
Speaker 5: But arguably it is an al Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 5: symbolically at the very let But anyway, it seems like
Speaker 5: we're deeper than ever into this.
Speaker 1: And you know, this Fisher text is also just a
Speaker 1: blast from the past too, you know, like I started
Speaker 1: university maybe not too long after he actually wrote this,
Speaker 1: and I remember two thousand and eight. I remember all
Speaker 1: that stuff too that he's talking about. I've seen those
Speaker 1: damn movies. He's mentioning most of them, So I mean,
Speaker 1: it's also fun for me to get back to that stuff.
Speaker 1: But yeah, capitalist realism, it is a kind of subjective
Speaker 1: belief that there is no alternative to the capitalist order.
Speaker 1: It goes a bit deeper than that too, because of
Speaker 1: the shift to post forwardism, which we'll have to get
Speaker 1: into as almost created a new situation in which work
Speaker 1: in labor seem to be changing drastically, and our relationships
Speaker 1: with our jobs and our families seem to be changing
Speaker 1: very draftically. Seems things seem to be in flux quite
Speaker 1: a bit more than they used to be. And actually
Speaker 1: capitalist realism seems in many ways to pick up or
Speaker 1: provide an alternative way of conceptualizing all this to something
Speaker 1: like say Friedrich Jameson's the Logic of Postmodernism or the
Speaker 1: Logic of late Capitalism. It's another way of talking about
Speaker 1: postmodernism with some different ideas about it for those of you,
Speaker 1: for those who may be less comfortable with using postmodernism
Speaker 1: as a way to conceptualize all of these social changes
Speaker 1: over the twentieth century and beyond. So it's not just
Speaker 1: like a simple you know, oh, there's an alternative, that's
Speaker 1: the definition of it.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 1: It is a cultural and historical configuration in much the
Speaker 1: same way that postmodernism is. When you use it in
Speaker 1: the way Jameson uses it, so can get into more
Speaker 1: of the specifics as we go along. But that's the
Speaker 1: general you know, that's why I was thinking of about it,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of a basic what is capitalist realism?
Speaker 1: What's Fisher're talking about here?
Speaker 4: Also the kind of Gijak saying it's like much easier
Speaker 4: to imagine an end of the world, write some sort
Speaker 4: of catastrophe than it is an end to capitalism, and
Speaker 4: like so, and that's sort of like the way and
Speaker 4: I guess like the fact that that's assuming you accept
Speaker 4: that premise, the fact that that's true is like evidence
Speaker 4: of capitalist realism existing in our sort of social political,
Speaker 4: cultural milieu.
Speaker 1: Fisher kind of attributes this equally to Gjek and jameson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this idea that it's easier to imagine the end
Speaker 1: of the world than the end of capitalism, which just
Speaker 1: and then he uses a kind of discussion of the
Speaker 1: movie Children of Men at the very beginning to illustrate
Speaker 1: this idea. But it just kind of goes towards the
Speaker 1: broader argument again of capitalist realism, right like, if it's
Speaker 1: easier to imagine the end of the world, then there
Speaker 1: really is no way we can imagine an alternative, right
Speaker 1: like our imaginative horizons have shrunk in around us in
Speaker 1: a way that means we just kind of give up.
Speaker 1: It's like this situation where now where we don't actually
Speaker 1: believe in the ideologies that we espouse. We know it's
Speaker 1: all kind of just like cynical bullshit, and yet we
Speaker 1: have to we act as if it's all true. Everything
Speaker 1: we're saying is true, and we act as if we
Speaker 1: believe in it. But that's all I was just saying.
Speaker 1: You know, like Zorin makes these promises. In one sense, yes,
Speaker 1: he's a politician. They all want to win, and he's
Speaker 1: saying these things to win cynical disavowal. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, like we should rally behind him because these
Speaker 1: are good things and we all want these things. And
Speaker 1: there's this sort of schizophrenia contradiction there between these two things.
Speaker 4: I'm actually not convinced that renfree is are a good idea.
Speaker 4: I actually think that's kind of a bad idea. But
Speaker 4: that's a whole other stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in any in any case, like the afford the
Speaker 1: general message of affordability is something everybody can get behind.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, that's crucial. I totally agree with that.
Speaker 2: Please elaborate on that wire. Rent freeze is bad under
Speaker 2: is it like bad under a certain context or just
Speaker 2: in any context?
Speaker 4: The problem with that with this is like housing availability,
Speaker 4: and when you just keep things artificially cheaper, you're just
Speaker 4: going to continue to increase demand, and it's actually just
Speaker 4: going to be harder to get an apartment, get anything.
Speaker 2: You mean that you would, you would reduce supply.
Speaker 4: You're gonna You're also going to reduce the incentive to
Speaker 4: increase supply.
Speaker 2: So I don't know about the demand, but the supply
Speaker 2: is that going to happen?
Speaker 4: Do I think that there should be like other policies
Speaker 4: that like make rent freezes possible, Like yes, I'm just saying,
Speaker 4: like in a vacuum in the current context we live in,
Speaker 4: doing a rent freeze is generally like not a good
Speaker 4: long term solution.
Speaker 1: Disagreeing with how we get there is not disqualifying you
Speaker 1: from having a leftist point of view is still like it,
Speaker 1: But the general message of affordability is like something we
Speaker 1: still even if we don't all agree on specifically how
Speaker 1: to get there. I don't think Victor secretly has like
Speaker 1: major real estate investments that he's worried about and he's
Speaker 1: like hiding them and lying to us by saying no,
Speaker 1: actually there's technical problems that would be hilarious and ballsy
Speaker 1: if that were the case, and I'd love it, not
Speaker 1: really because I'd feel betrayed, but anyway, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he's behind.
Speaker 4: In New Zealand, there was a policy that was like
Speaker 4: a real failure, like when they had kind of the
Speaker 4: labor government, where they started giving like first time home
Speaker 4: buyers like a big tax credit and basically just like
Speaker 4: giving people more money to try to help them get
Speaker 4: a house, which sounds on paper like a good idea,
Speaker 4: but what happened is housing prices went through the roof
Speaker 4: because all of a sudden, there's more people have money
Speaker 4: to buy houses, but they're not actually building more houses.
Speaker 4: So therefore the price of houses went way up because
Speaker 4: everyone was trying to buy into market. So like, you
Speaker 4: need more than just like one policy in isolation, like
Speaker 4: you need to do more than just give people money
Speaker 4: to buy houses. You need to increase the supply of houses.
Speaker 2: You could definitely do rent freezes. It's just not a
Speaker 2: long term solution, that's what I mean. It's not a
Speaker 2: long term. So definitely it's not like it's catastrophic.
Speaker 3: No, No, I don't think it's catastrophic. The way that
Speaker 3: that policy in New Zealand is.
Speaker 1: Like commodifying the housing market in general is probably more
Speaker 1: long term issue.
Speaker 2: But yeah, sorry, capitalist realism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should pivot back to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can. I can bring it to that. Just
Speaker 2: I was surprised you want to talk about this boo
Speaker 2: because I was thinking of, like, this is the one
Speaker 2: book that's probably talked about too much on the left.
Speaker 2: In fact, it's so I knew that this book was
Speaker 2: something unique when a few years ago I would see
Speaker 2: people's hinge profiles like have capitalist Realism in it sometimes,
Speaker 2: and it was like one of these books you would
Speaker 2: see people.
Speaker 1: Just really quote on the dating app.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well what I mean is like you'd find normy
Speaker 2: is quote unquote nor me is. Are people who aren't
Speaker 2: really into theory like that who would know about this
Speaker 2: book and kind of like it.
Speaker 4: I think signal that they're like I'm kind of into theory.
Speaker 4: They just have like, yeah, post realism.
Speaker 1: Quote, which it is very accessible. It is very accessible
Speaker 1: a virtue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the other thing about it is
Speaker 2: that it really is like Jamison Jishak and I would
Speaker 2: say parts of Christopher lash kind of distilled in this
Speaker 2: more accessible format, although Christopher lash is very accessible and
Speaker 2: I think he's much better to be honest, But like,
Speaker 2: this book is good. I mean it resonates with people,
Speaker 2: I think because of the examples when he talks about,
Speaker 2: like in university, how there's this one idea I remember
Speaker 2: resonated with me a lot, was this idea of depressive
Speaker 2: hydonia as opposed to add hidonia, which like traditionally you
Speaker 2: can get diagnosed for not being able to feel pleasure,
Speaker 2: but he thinks the sort of zeitgeist of a lot
Speaker 2: of young people is actually this inability to not feel
Speaker 2: anything but constant pleasure. It's like addiction, but it kind
Speaker 2: of numbness as a result of that. And how you
Speaker 2: would see people in his classes like wearing headphones all
Speaker 2: the time, even if they weren't listening to anything. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. It was just just this
Speaker 2: obsession with always wanting to be distracted. So it resonates
Speaker 2: in terms.
Speaker 1: Of art, resonated with me definitely.
Speaker 2: In terms of what it says. You know, there's the
Speaker 2: kind of obvious like people can't imagine anything outside of capitalism,
Speaker 2: but I think there's other aspects of it that are
Speaker 2: more interesting. I know, you know, I'm curious what you
Speaker 2: guys's favorite chapter was. For me, it's Marxist Supernanny, the
Speaker 2: chapter nine, I.
Speaker 1: Believe, Yeah, the last one, I think, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Marxist Supernanny has this has a point that I think
Speaker 2: gets at something a lot of other Left authors, except
Speaker 2: the likes of Jijik and maybe Lash and Jamison, get at,
Speaker 2: which is actually this idea of Marxist supernanny. Is this
Speaker 2: idea that you know what, like the left has defined
Speaker 2: itself about freedom for so long, and but what is
Speaker 2: capitalism's big, big strength. It's like constantly giving people things
Speaker 2: that they want, but not giving things them what they need. Right,
Speaker 2: it's giving them what they want but not what they need.
Speaker 2: And what is the left's role in this? Is it
Speaker 2: to like accelerate the wave of capital by you know
Speaker 2: more opening up more windows of freedom and you know,
Speaker 2: desire or is it actually to kind of be like, hey,
Speaker 2: you know what, protect us from what we want and
Speaker 2: give us what we need. Like this is the whole
Speaker 2: point about the supernanny. The supernanny. Oh, I should really
Speaker 2: probably elaborate on this super nanny for those who don't know,
Speaker 2: is this TV show in Britain which was basically about
Speaker 2: this like very menacing, big supernanny woman who would be
Speaker 2: called in by parents who had no ability to like
Speaker 2: manage their kids, and their kids would be total delinquents, misbehaving, just.
Speaker 1: Like Missus Stoubtfire type of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, like kind of just like eating ten
Speaker 2: chocolate bars a day, won't want to listen to their
Speaker 2: parents and it's just video games. And usually it would
Speaker 2: often be like single mothers who need to call in,
Speaker 2: or very where I would say permissive liberal dads, So
Speaker 2: I dad's do I say? Like featured, who would be
Speaker 2: calling it would be calling in the super nanny to
Speaker 2: go manage the kids, and she would bring in this
Speaker 2: like really harsh discipline, but like in a way that
Speaker 2: would work, not just like mindless, you know, not like
Speaker 2: just beating kids or something, but just effective discipline that
Speaker 2: would put the kid's life in order and get them
Speaker 2: to actually listen, because you need that for kids to
Speaker 2: grow up, like some level of obedience. Right, And he
Speaker 2: thinks that's emblematic a little bit of capitalist culture. And
Speaker 2: then how it kind of destroys our discipline willpower through
Speaker 2: constant consumerism, and how it's in the system's interest to
Speaker 2: do that. And how if if a lot of people
Speaker 2: seem to actually kind of crave and to some extent,
Speaker 2: like I feel almost like I have I'm free, but
Speaker 2: in a way that actually hinder me. You know, Young
Speaker 2: John gets at this a lot like, how now we're
Speaker 2: masters of our own exploitation, and how maybe actually there's
Speaker 2: been a collapse of authority, but in a collapse of
Speaker 2: authority except for like capitalist hierarchies, but in all these
Speaker 2: other arrangements, like the family, there's a collapse of authority,
Speaker 2: collapse of communal authority, religious authority, and all that's good
Speaker 2: for capitalist interest to kind of colonize everything. And I
Speaker 2: thought that chapter was great, and I wish it was
Speaker 2: longer because I wish he took that logic to a
Speaker 2: bigger conclusion, because I think a lot that goes over
Speaker 2: a lot of people's heads, and that's stuff that lash
Speaker 2: in the culture and Narcissism has been saying since, you know,
Speaker 2: first book was in the seventies and in the eighties.
Speaker 4: In a way, I'm not surprised that it goes over
Speaker 4: people's heads, because it does suggest maybe some conclusions that
Speaker 4: are traditionally associated with a more right leaning or at
Speaker 4: least right right leaning analysis of culture.
Speaker 3: I mean Christopher Lash.
Speaker 4: Too, like for those of you that don't know listening,
Speaker 4: is someone that you know, I think that if you
Speaker 4: actually read him, it's not really like clear that you
Speaker 4: can just say he's a right wing figure. But the
Speaker 4: right has co opted him like recently, like the right wing,
Speaker 4: like like the post liberals have kind of like used
Speaker 4: taken a lot of inspiration from Christopher Latch But like
Speaker 4: I think I'm tempted to say that Lash would even
Speaker 4: likely reject that characterization, but well.
Speaker 2: His daughter does actually very much dislike the way he
Speaker 2: is used by the likes of Steve Bannon, because Steve
Speaker 2: Banner claims to be influenced by revolt of the elites,
Speaker 2: and when you think about that, it's not hard to
Speaker 2: see how. But Christopher Lash saw himself, as he described
Speaker 2: himself as a socialist in economics and a small sea
Speaker 2: culturally conservative on small cea culturally conservative but socialist on economics,
Speaker 2: and you start off as a full on Marxist at
Speaker 2: the beginning of his career. So he has a kind
Speaker 2: of historical materialist look at things, and he's been critical
Speaker 2: of both the left and right, Like he'd be critical
Speaker 2: of the right for not really proposing like material solutions
Speaker 2: and really speaking to superstructural things, and the left kind
Speaker 2: of actually having like weirdly capitalistic views on some like
Speaker 2: so sociocultural stuff.
Speaker 4: With like desire and enjoyment and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Right, he's kind of a critical kind of.
Speaker 4: Like liberal illiberal like like like hedonism basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's it's interesting that you brought up biunchall
Speaker 1: Han as well, because I definitely while I was going
Speaker 1: some of the parts definitely brought me back. I was
Speaker 1: like burnout society. There's definitely some big overlaps between self
Speaker 1: exploitation that that bunch Han talks about and the kind
Speaker 1: of self self surveillance that after he brought up Deluze,
Speaker 1: after Mark Fisher brings up Deluze and that that PostScript
Speaker 1: on control Society, he brings up this idea of self
Speaker 1: self surveillance, like you're internalizing these mechanisms that were once
Speaker 1: sort of seems like they were outside of you. That
Speaker 1: there that you're being You're being performance evaluated. Your performance
Speaker 1: at work is, for example, or in an interview, it's
Speaker 1: being evaluated all the time. And there's a big complicated
Speaker 1: system that that requires. Ironically, as we move deeper into neoliberalism,
Speaker 1: the anti government ideology par excellence, we end up with
Speaker 1: more and more layers of hierarchy and bureaucracy go figure
Speaker 1: Fisher points out. But one of the things we end
Speaker 1: up doing also is internalizing that performance review kind of structure,
Speaker 1: so we end up self monitoring, we end up and that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that reminded me of of kind of Bunchulhan's argument about
Speaker 1: like what we do with with cell phones and the
Speaker 1: way we the way we we have to move from
Speaker 1: like a negativity of almost like cynicism towards ever achieving anything,
Speaker 1: to like this overabundance of positivity like work, work, work,
Speaker 1: and work.
Speaker 2: Is never done.
Speaker 1: Exploit yourself like a paradigmatic influencer is something. The longer
Speaker 1: they step away from the computer is the more chance
Speaker 1: that they're going to fade into irrelevance. So they kind
Speaker 1: of have to be and people are literally just burning out,
Speaker 1: passing out on the subways and stuff like that. There
Speaker 1: are some elements of that I think in here, but
Speaker 1: more of a materialist analysis as well, because it is
Speaker 1: all pinned down on I mean, one of the big
Speaker 1: tectonic shifts he points at is the movement from Fordism
Speaker 1: to Postforwardism, which is a little more maybe one of
Speaker 1: the more obscure things in here that people won't be
Speaker 1: quite as familiar with.
Speaker 4: Do you want to outline that transition from from Fordism
Speaker 4: to Postfwardism just for the listeners?
Speaker 1: I know, I immediately regretted bringing that up prison, like shit,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to fucking oh my god. So obviously
Speaker 1: it's named after like Ford himself of car Fame, where
Speaker 1: you have a physical factory and you have an assembly
Speaker 1: line and loads of employees and kind of a very
Speaker 1: clear work structure. But actually he dates the transition of
Speaker 1: Fordism to Postfordism. What was it like October nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine or something like.
Speaker 3: That, where.
Speaker 1: There's this shift according to I'll just read it here.
Speaker 1: According to Marxist economist Christian Marazzi, the switch from Fordism
Speaker 1: to Postfordism can be given a very specific date October sixth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. It was on that day that the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve increased interest rates by twenty points, preparing the
Speaker 1: way for supply side economics that would constitute the economic
Speaker 1: reality in which we are now and meshed. And what
Speaker 1: I got out of this was the movement towards much more.
Speaker 1: This word flexibility comes up, and these flexible supply lines
Speaker 1: on demands, manufacturing supply lines that are ready to sort
Speaker 1: of shift and break and pop up somewhere else. Rather
Speaker 1: than having these very stable, secure, long term supply lines,
Speaker 1: you also have you know, the offshoring of a lot
Speaker 1: of works and the diversification and globalization of all these
Speaker 1: like logistics lines too. So like Japan is one of
Speaker 1: the big then the Japanese car industry is one of
Speaker 1: the big pioneers of like on demand shipping for example,
Speaker 1: where you have very very carefully timed and tuned supply lines.
Speaker 1: You don't just have these big factories and with like
Speaker 1: tons of like parts in them anymore. Everything is on demand,
Speaker 1: on time. Everything has to be tightly regulated. But then
Speaker 1: at the same time, this flexibility creates a lot of
Speaker 1: instability too, and so Postfordism is kind of this move
Speaker 1: towards also markets where it's not about a stable commodity,
Speaker 1: it's about you know, creating new desires, shifting to accommodate
Speaker 1: what consumers are saying. And by the way, people are
Speaker 1: more considered as consumers. Now we're very used to being
Speaker 1: referred to as consumers, which is kind of a type development.
Speaker 2: I would say probably the simplest way I could think
Speaker 2: of explaining Fordism and postforism is just the transition from
Speaker 2: a producer economy to consumer economy. Like the Fordism is
Speaker 2: just you know, assembly lines. It's a company, sorry, a
Speaker 2: country where you're exporting goods for other people to consume,
Speaker 2: whether it be weapons or whatever, materials cars like America
Speaker 2: was producing more than it consumed for a while and
Speaker 2: then and you could say the ideology of that was
Speaker 2: more what Weber might call the Protestant work at you know,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, you should be a little bit
Speaker 2: more austere, you shouldn't consume too much, you should work hard,
Speaker 2: you should be disciplined. But then the shift from a
Speaker 2: consumer economy, which comes with world trade and globalization and
Speaker 2: people are consuming more and now the main way for
Speaker 2: people to get rich is to sell stuff to Americans
Speaker 2: and First World countries like in Britain, France, Canada, and
Speaker 2: so you know, with that you get an ideology that changes,
Speaker 2: like you get this is the basin superstructure thing with
Speaker 2: Marxism is like, when you people and capitalists have a
Speaker 2: means of getting rich one way, ideologies are going to
Speaker 2: kind of shift in ways that benefit that. It's not
Speaker 2: really conspiratorial, it's just that, you know, obviously it's going
Speaker 2: to mesh together just due to the nature of the interests, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, what ideologies are better for a consumer economy,
Speaker 2: one that doesn't tell you to be guilty about consuming,
Speaker 2: one that tells you actually should be guilty for not
Speaker 2: living your best life, for not consuming. And that's the
Speaker 2: kind of also get like these sort of liberation movements
Speaker 2: on the left, there's a constant debate between the like
Speaker 2: proletarian feminist wing, which I support, and the sex positive
Speaker 2: wing of feminism, which is more like, you know what,
Speaker 2: we should like legalize all sex work and let's do
Speaker 2: all that, and which I think accelerates the trends that
Speaker 2: I've got us here, you know, kind of it's a
Speaker 2: whole other topic. We don't have to go into that.
Speaker 2: But what I what I just mean is like a
Speaker 2: lot of the ideologies I think more people when they
Speaker 2: have issues with the left, they have issues with certain
Speaker 2: sociocultural tendencies, and that comes out of the sixties, which
Speaker 2: comes out of this post fort is transition, right.
Speaker 4: You're accelerating the processes if I'm hearing you're right, Tony right,
Speaker 4: Like that's kind of what you have in mind that Like,
Speaker 4: so it's not necessarily like about whatever, like legalizing prostitution
Speaker 4: in specific, but just like it's an example of something
Speaker 4: that is like that you see as consistent with this
Speaker 4: pattern of just like come out of find kind of
Speaker 4: like desires.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean.
Speaker 1: One of the big features of postfwardism is kind of
Speaker 1: like a gig economy type as opposed to like the
Speaker 1: stable work that I don't know, I guess like grandparents
Speaker 1: now in this generation had this kind of stable work,
Speaker 1: paying into a pension, having this kind of company that
Speaker 1: lays out the path before you a little bit, and
Speaker 1: maybe you probably have healthcare through your company and all that.
Speaker 1: We move much more towards like a dual income gig
Speaker 1: economy where work is contractual and expected to be temporary
Speaker 1: and you're not expect the company is no longer expected
Speaker 1: to you know, have your back on healthcare and pension
Speaker 1: and all these other things. Like the so called sort
Speaker 1: of nanny state did or forced them to do. The
Speaker 1: kind of welfare state idea corporate or at least like
Speaker 1: a kind of corporate welfare state type of consensus. Postfwordism
Speaker 1: kind of does away with that. And that's also connected
Speaker 1: to this flexibilizing of supply lines, this offshoring, this of production,
Speaker 1: this transition to a consumer economy. And he even talks about,
Speaker 1: you know, he's him and being again in this sort
Speaker 1: of I guess community college like system where he's seeing
Speaker 1: kids coming in from families that now have like overworked,
Speaker 1: dual income parents, and the parents have a lot less
Speaker 1: time to spend with the child. So he's saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the kids I'm seeing are seem to be
Speaker 1: like almost less and less socialized because they haven't had
Speaker 1: that like attention that a single income sort of you know,
Speaker 1: fordist family could could afford for them. Postfortism makes this
Speaker 1: makes it a lot more demanding to even have a family,
Speaker 1: which is he says, is ironic because neoliberalism depends so
Speaker 1: heavily on the factory. It's the it's the fact that
Speaker 1: the family is the fact factory of the consumers that
Speaker 1: need to buy the products that that are being made.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I caught that too in the book where I
Speaker 2: actually didn't like that because he kind of uncritically went
Speaker 2: with what is a very popular view and at leftist academia,
Speaker 2: which I think popularized kind of by Wendy Brown, is
Speaker 2: this idea that neoliberalism actually pushed the idea of the
Speaker 2: family as something to replace the safety net. But you
Speaker 2: know that is like taking Reaganist rhetoric and like the
Speaker 2: right wing faction of neoliberalism, because that's where I think
Speaker 2: this point of view ignores is that there is very
Speaker 2: much a left wing faction in neoliberalism. There's both the
Speaker 2: right and the left faction neoliberalism. And they'll say, yeah,
Speaker 2: of course the right will sometimes say the family is
Speaker 2: like the haven and the heartless world. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: not the that's actually a Marx Marx quote, but this
Speaker 2: idea of like says that about religion, though, But the
Speaker 2: family is like this thing that will replace that should
Speaker 2: be exist, but the welfare state should be abolished. But
Speaker 2: the thing is the regardless of what anyone says, is
Speaker 2: the family was just declining. You know, you see a
Speaker 2: broader decline of the family, no, regardless of what's happening.
Speaker 2: So doesn't really matter what I think is actually the
Speaker 2: overall just factual trend is that Postfordism saw a decline
Speaker 2: of the family. And it's I and I think people
Speaker 2: throw in that stuff which is like, oh, the neoliberals
Speaker 2: wanted to keep the family. No, it's that they were
Speaker 2: more like, they weren't idiots, and they knew that if
Speaker 2: you threw people off the welfare state there would be
Speaker 2: consequences to some extent, and that you had they preferred
Speaker 2: the family over you know, the welfare state, whereas a
Speaker 2: left where often prefer the welfare state over the family.
Speaker 2: I think we should have support both. Like, I think
Speaker 2: both are pretty damn important.
Speaker 1: Like worrying about the integrity of the family lately has
Speaker 1: been more of a right wing talking point in like
Speaker 1: more contemporary politics of today. Fortunately, and I mean he's
Speaker 1: I think his broader point is kind of correct. I mean,
Speaker 1: especially for the latest generation where like you know, again,
Speaker 1: the affordability crisis also makes like having a family much
Speaker 1: more difficult and expensive. And of course, but the right
Speaker 1: he tends to take this criticism and say, like the
Speaker 1: left is against family is the postmodern neo Marxist culturalists
Speaker 1: are actually like directly opposed to any kind of family.
Speaker 2: But they do say abolish the family. They just envision
Speaker 2: this idea of like a communal structure which is basically
Speaker 2: like the pre nuclear family structure of the tribal communal structure,
Speaker 2: which you know it say's not like they don't appo,
Speaker 2: they don't support family, It is that how are you
Speaker 2: just going to abolish the family and go to that structure?
Speaker 2: And they'll say, well, it's possible because past, you know,
Speaker 2: there's been past arrangements. And it's like sure, but how
Speaker 2: do you get there in this modern state? And you know,
Speaker 2: most people think that it's going to be the administrative state.
Speaker 2: And if you look at the way the left talks
Speaker 2: about childcare, like the radical left, because a lot of
Speaker 2: some some marksists supported a lot of anarchists support it,
Speaker 2: and you know, some like academics, left wing progressive academics
Speaker 2: support it, but it's not a really popular position.
Speaker 1: I think everybody is worried about whatever version of the family,
Speaker 1: whether it's the very traditionalist heterosexual nuclear family of the
Speaker 1: right where you're not allowed to have gay parents or anything,
Speaker 1: and then or the more I think ample versions you
Speaker 1: find on the left. Everyone is kind of worried about
Speaker 1: what capitalism means for the family structure, which it's connected
Speaker 1: to the move to postfwardism. Is really what I wanted
Speaker 1: to say, All these different phenomena are connected there. Yes,
Speaker 1: Postfwardism is like the movie Heat compared to like older
Speaker 1: gangster movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas are like are
Speaker 1: like the paradigmatic Fordist situations, because in The Godfather and
Speaker 1: Goodfellas you have this very traditionalist ghost of the old
Speaker 1: world Italian gangsters with these family structures and these like well,
Speaker 1: these like hard one value system that holds their almost
Speaker 1: very kind of almost slightly mysterious and ritualistic kinds of
Speaker 1: hierarchies in place, as opposed to Heat, which is just
Speaker 1: like a bunch of guys who are doing a job
Speaker 1: and aren't really like connected and to anything and not
Speaker 1: clearly not part of a family. Because at one point
Speaker 1: one of the characters wants to get married, and one
Speaker 1: of the crime bosses is like, how do you expect
Speaker 1: to help me if you're tied down with marriage? Like
Speaker 1: the idea of like rootless criminals who have no attachment
Speaker 1: to and they're much more on a hey, I kind
Speaker 1: of just compares those The Heat is like analogous to
Speaker 1: the difference.
Speaker 4: Part of the thing in this book that I always
Speaker 4: felt was maybe incomplete or taken a two face value
Speaker 4: is the structural explanation.
Speaker 3: For mental health.
Speaker 4: Okay, I guess that that it's like that, it's like, oh,
Speaker 4: like it's it's like the capitalist economic which like I'm
Speaker 4: I think that that plays a role, but it's like
Speaker 4: not the actual mechanism. And I do actually feel like
Speaker 4: maybe the family is like an important kind of question
Speaker 4: here that uh that like that I again, and I've
Speaker 4: said this before on the podcast on past topics, that uh,
Speaker 4: you know, the left is maybe not equipped enough or
Speaker 4: like too wary because of how conservative right wing coded
Speaker 4: talk about the family is and religion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and really well, when I.
Speaker 4: Really do feel like like just saying, oh, like it's
Speaker 4: because capital is is so toxic and it's not giving
Speaker 4: us the things that we need. That's why we're all depressed.
Speaker 4: I just don't think that that's a that's an incomplete.
Speaker 2: Story, because we have to work. That's the thing. The
Speaker 2: way they take it is like, oh, capitalism makes us
Speaker 2: depressed because we have to work. And it's like, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, in some cases that's true.
Speaker 2: Part like capital well, the thing about Marx, Like, remember Mark,
Speaker 2: what Marx was saying said capitalism creates alienation, not that
Speaker 2: it makes you depressed. There are different things. I mean,
Speaker 2: alienation is a does like limit your humanity. It kind
Speaker 2: of dehumanizes you in some way. But it's not like
Speaker 2: he's not saying capitalism makes you want to kill yourself.
Speaker 2: Like the rise of mental illness is is really something
Speaker 2: unpressed in it that we've been seeing and it's does
Speaker 2: zact like it's merely as a result of people now
Speaker 2: just being open about it. Like I mean, it's completely
Speaker 2: utter bowl like the fact that you have such high
Speaker 2: depression rates and suicide rates in the most rich countries.
Speaker 2: May I add I think Han takes Mark Fisher's analysis
Speaker 2: to a more strong conclusion. Like Young Johan talks about
Speaker 2: the family, but he also talks about religion and decline
Speaker 2: of rituals, where he says the decline of ritual of
Speaker 2: religion has not been completely emancipatory process because while we
Speaker 2: can say, like organized religion was really repressive and some
Speaker 2: of the superstitions of some religions were very backward and unenlightening,
Speaker 2: he thinks that you think the core strength of religion
Speaker 2: is rituals, and rituals are something that are actually good,
Speaker 2: and that is very much missing in the capitalist society.
Speaker 2: And yeah, like I think, I mean, he goes as
Speaker 2: far to say that is the cause of depression, and
Speaker 2: I think that's certainly part of it.
Speaker 1: It is interesting that he brings up the mental health
Speaker 1: crisis because that has been seeing a lot of attention,
Speaker 1: especially in universities in the last couple of years. This
Speaker 1: like sort of and obviously we got a good dose
Speaker 1: of dose of it in COVID as well, the mental
Speaker 1: health epidemic, the hidden pandemic it was called at the
Speaker 1: time or something like that. And not that I'm laughing
Speaker 1: at it. It's a serious thing having an ADHD diagnosis
Speaker 1: myself and then reading a line that runs something like
Speaker 1: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a pathology. It is a
Speaker 1: pathology of late capitalism. I'm like, yeah, I'm late capitalism
Speaker 1: man produced by money slamming together and Lena Hadrian Collider
Speaker 1: and then I popped out, and also my mother and father.
Speaker 1: But they're inconsequential to my birth. No, I mean, I
Speaker 1: take his point. These are depression and ADHD and mental
Speaker 1: health are conditions that are obviously neurologically instantiated. It's not
Speaker 1: like the scientists who are studying these things are just
Speaker 1: crazy ideologues hallucinating genes and cells and brain activity. But
Speaker 1: these sorts of things are also reflective of I don't
Speaker 1: know if he asks this in the right way, Like
Speaker 1: obviously they're biologically instantiated, but what causes them? Like what
Speaker 1: is their cause? And obviously the answer will be will
Speaker 1: like ADHD, for specifically, is one of the most genetic
Speaker 1: things they've identified, like out of out of anything. If
Speaker 1: you see someone with ADHD, like there's a huge chance
Speaker 1: that like one of their parents will have it too.
Speaker 1: It's very heritable. So that's how they would answer. But
Speaker 1: he's you know, I take his point to.
Speaker 2: Play devil's advocate. One could like you can definitely say
Speaker 2: like that adh the traits we associate that we call
Speaker 2: ADHD are genetic, But the classification of ADHD is a
Speaker 2: result of capitalism, I think is more what like Fisher
Speaker 2: would say, given that, like think about it, like why
Speaker 2: is ADHD a problem to be diagnosed? Because it makes
Speaker 2: you like the only reason why any pathologies ever really
Speaker 2: created as a pathologies? Because it renders your renders you
Speaker 2: unable to effectively integrate into the existing society. When in
Speaker 2: the case of ADHD, it's like it's not like a
Speaker 2: it doesn't make you violent, it doesn't make you completely dysfunctional.
Speaker 2: Maybe yes, but like it's just like, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: you're not as productive as you should be.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of emotional regulation problems.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or you're not as productive as you should be also, right,
Speaker 4: which is more mundane.
Speaker 1: Oh, I have so many days where I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get everything done today, and then at eight o'clock,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I did nothing today. In fact, I undid
Speaker 1: some things.
Speaker 2: I did yesterday.
Speaker 1: But but no, it's uh, it's the problem of separating.
Speaker 1: You know, I guess historical processes from sort of like
Speaker 1: the scientific style of explanation, right, Like we know we
Speaker 1: know things like heart attacks are modern era diseases because
Speaker 1: while people simply just died more often than they would
Speaker 1: reach the age where heart attacks became and then once
Speaker 1: life inspectancy goes up, you have new diseases to deal with.
Speaker 1: Or once the refrigerator is invented and we're not curing
Speaker 1: all of our meat, okay, like now stomach cancer is
Speaker 1: going to change its distribution, and it's the problem of
Speaker 1: separating kind of I guess subject and object in that
Speaker 1: sort of way too. It's like, okay, well, then what's
Speaker 1: is refrigeration the cause of heart attacks? Like they you
Speaker 1: know it doesn't of course, of course there's like it's
Speaker 1: so there's lots of different ways to explain those sorts
Speaker 1: of things, and ADHD and depression are examples. But then
Speaker 1: you know it's no coincidence that you have this like
Speaker 1: massive pharmaceutical company. I remember the last time they changed
Speaker 1: my my ADHD medication. I can't remember if I mentioned this.
Speaker 1: I'm not on it anymore, but last time they just
Speaker 1: changed it on me without asking, and I looked at
Speaker 1: it and the new place the factory was located in Israel.
Speaker 1: It went from a factory from Sweden to a factory
Speaker 1: of in Israel. And then I was just like, and
Speaker 1: they didn't think that like asking me about this.
Speaker 3: We wait.
Speaker 4: So it was the same medication. It just happened to
Speaker 4: be one that was made in Israel.
Speaker 1: Now it was a generic that they started offering. So
Speaker 1: once once a generic comes out when there was no
Speaker 1: generic before, your insurance company says we're not going to
Speaker 1: cover the normal one. We're only going to cover the
Speaker 1: generic now. And apparently sometimes the also the pharmacy will
Speaker 1: just switch you onto the generic without even telling you,
Speaker 1: so then suddenly your medication is different. And I looked
Speaker 1: up the factory that was being made in It wasn't
Speaker 1: Sweden anymore, it was in Israel.
Speaker 4: You'd rather support those blonde Swedes than those than those
Speaker 4: Jews in Israel.
Speaker 1: Yes, definitely, definitely That's what I was getting at.
Speaker 2: And also.
Speaker 1: Also all of it's connected. These material developments, developments of science, history, culture, society.
Speaker 1: Obviously they all interact, and it's really kind of crazy
Speaker 1: to try to separate and isolate these things. But yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: back getting back to sorry.
Speaker 4: Well, I just want to I want to bring it
Speaker 4: back for sure to sort of like the capitalist realism
Speaker 4: and maybe like how we can use this to think
Speaker 4: about contemporary stuff. I mean, this was originally inspired partly
Speaker 4: by Eric's observations about the reactions to Zoron's when in
Speaker 4: New York, but I guess like before getting to that,
Speaker 4: I also kind of I've been meaning and I wasn't
Speaker 4: sure where to fit it in. Just to comment about
Speaker 4: this the sort of thought experiment that I've mentioned before
Speaker 4: that I've used with students about, you know, it's easier
Speaker 4: to imagine the.
Speaker 2: End of the world.
Speaker 4: I guess I just want to start by throwing a
Speaker 4: little bit of cold water on that, because I guess
Speaker 4: it's not surprising to me if you think about it.
Speaker 4: Why it's easier to imagine the end of the world
Speaker 4: because it's simple, Like it's like an asteroid hits the world.
Speaker 4: It's not complicated. It's like people are going to die,
Speaker 4: you know, like there's going to be droughts, Like it's
Speaker 4: not like the things that could destroy the world are
Speaker 4: relatively simp Mass destruction is like not complicated. Making sure
Speaker 4: that everybody has like a good material means is complicated.
Speaker 3: Like that's why it's harder.
Speaker 4: To imagine, because it's actually complicated. So I don't know
Speaker 4: if you guys disagree with me, but I guess I
Speaker 4: guess I just think that the little the fun thought
Speaker 4: experiment is actually like not as revealing to me as
Speaker 4: it seems, because to me, it's actually not a mystery
Speaker 4: why it's harder to imagine alternatives because it is actually
Speaker 4: a very complicated problem, whereas destroying every human on the
Speaker 4: planet Earth is not that complicated.
Speaker 1: It is certainly like a catchy little slogan that really
Speaker 1: drives the point home. It's easier to imagine, and our
Speaker 1: cultural imaginary is definitely much more jam packed with disaster
Speaker 1: films and climate and zombie and plague and whatever. Other
Speaker 1: ends of the world's kind.
Speaker 4: Of even in the conversation we've been having now, like
Speaker 4: we've sort of been talking about the balance between and
Speaker 4: Tony I think up really like interesting stuff with regard
Speaker 4: to Christopher Lash and just sort of this like the
Speaker 4: fact that, okay, like if capitalism is just about satisfying desires,
Speaker 4: well it's no wonder that there's going to be some
Speaker 4: sort of emptiness to that.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 4: So then it's we've sort of been dancing around this
Speaker 4: idea that you know, we haven't been framing it in
Speaker 4: terms of alternatives, right, But there's a way in which
Speaker 4: our conversation was sort of talking about, well, what do
Speaker 4: we really need in our society?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: And I think Chapter nine, I guess, is sort of
Speaker 4: onto some of these ideas that you know, well, we
Speaker 4: need some kind of paternalism, some sort of way to
Speaker 4: encourage more discipline or something like that, right, because just
Speaker 4: Giving people more of what they want, i e. To
Speaker 4: satisfy their sort of hedonistic desires. Well, that's not really
Speaker 4: going to do it in a way because I mean
Speaker 4: it may might help, right, like I mean just giving
Speaker 4: people stuff, but maybe like the more fundamental problems that
Speaker 4: Fisher is talking about in this book, well we're not
Speaker 4: really just going to solve them necessarily by just giving
Speaker 4: people like more liberal freedom in the sense of just
Speaker 4: more or more hedonistic freedom. And then so like even
Speaker 4: so as my point of bringing that up and rehashing
Speaker 4: that is, like we are noticing the complexity because there's
Speaker 4: like so many like competing interests and desires and concerns
Speaker 4: about like what actually constitutes a good life that's worth
Speaker 4: living in a society. What's a thing that constitutes a
Speaker 4: good society. Well, maybe it's rituals and patterns and family.
Speaker 4: I mean, these are like I'm saying, these are complicated problems, right,
Speaker 4: these are not This is not like like imagining an
Speaker 4: alternative that addresses all of those things that we've been
Speaker 4: talking about is seems to me to be actually like
Speaker 4: a huge puzzle.
Speaker 1: My idea with this thinking about Zorin was just that well, clearly,
Speaker 1: like conservatives disagree and that, and they would say it's
Speaker 1: very easy apparently for them to imagine the end of
Speaker 1: capitalism because Zorin apparently represents a threat because he's being
Speaker 1: called a communist. I think, like just just recently, Trump
Speaker 1: was just agreed that he's a communist and was going
Speaker 1: to look into deporting him, and like Homeland Security had
Speaker 1: a meeting about him and all this shit, Like there's
Speaker 1: some panic going around. And so apparently for them, it
Speaker 1: is easy to imagine the end of capitalism because a
Speaker 1: New York mayor could end capitalism, apparently by the way
Speaker 1: they're reacting. But that's the point, right, how do you
Speaker 1: distinguish their rhetoric from the reality that they're like, they're
Speaker 1: not talking about a reality at all. Anyway, as far
Speaker 1: as Zorin can go, he's just going to be able
Speaker 1: to draw a happy face, which is fine.
Speaker 2: So there's this tendency, and I've talked about it with
Speaker 2: other people on my podcast One Time Radio, and it's
Speaker 2: this tendency for the left to affirm or support something
Speaker 2: that inadvertently either is it commentative to capitalism, benefits capitalism,
Speaker 2: or affirms something that is already happening under capitalism. A
Speaker 2: good example is this authority question, like the family arguments,
Speaker 2: you often hear in favor of abolishing the family, or
Speaker 2: against the likes of you know, Biancho Han's view, or
Speaker 2: the likes of Christopher Lash's view, or just anyone who
Speaker 2: wants to defend the family. They'll say, well, the existing
Speaker 2: family is oppressive, and that sometimes you know, if when
Speaker 2: kids are and don't have you know, real freedom, I mean,
Speaker 2: their parents have custody and all that. If you have
Speaker 2: a bad parent, you're fucked. And now they're not wrong
Speaker 2: about that. However, their solution is to look at broken
Speaker 2: families and to say, you know what the solution is,
Speaker 2: we should just do away with the family. And I
Speaker 2: think it's silly and naive, because yes, this is something
Speaker 2: that is bad, like that some people have really bad luck.
Speaker 2: In fact, a lot of the people who make this
Speaker 2: very argument come from broken families, which gives them a
Speaker 2: sort of bias in the where they'll say, you know,
Speaker 2: if they'll project what is really ultimately a family trauma
Speaker 2: onto their politics, and I think, damn, don't ruin it
Speaker 2: for the rest of us. But like, also, it's just
Speaker 2: not a great solution. What I think we should look
Speaker 2: at is why not that we should get rid of
Speaker 2: the structure necessarily, or like I don't think there's only
Speaker 2: one structure, but that we should think that we're wise
Speaker 2: enough that we have figured out this clear alternative to
Speaker 2: like the family structure. I think, you know, you have
Speaker 2: we really careful before you embrace the politics of like,
Speaker 2: you know, let's get rid of that.
Speaker 4: I think the real thing is the construction a society
Speaker 4: of just deconstructing everything, deconstruct gender, deconstruct family.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, we should look at like, Okay, we should
Speaker 2: have better authorities, Like that's that's the question, is we
Speaker 2: should have We shouldn't help families so that we have
Speaker 2: as we have less broken homes.
Speaker 4: Don't get rid of binaries, just have better binaries.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know, I don't know if i'd go that,
Speaker 2: but like, actually, actually, you know what, I'm pretty much
Speaker 2: I'm very I'm pretty against the gender binary. But that's
Speaker 2: another whole topic.
Speaker 3: Well, I just I just meant.
Speaker 4: I just meant in the sense of like these authoritative
Speaker 4: like ways of thinking about things that like it's not
Speaker 4: that there's a problem with like authority per se, it's
Speaker 4: just a problem some people think there is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some people.
Speaker 2: People think there is. In fact, like this is a
Speaker 2: kind of streak you find in Wilhelm Reich's sort of view.
Speaker 2: Wilhelm Reich was this guy who thought that the family
Speaker 2: was oppressive. We covered him, didn't we.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about him a couple of weeks back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the family was oppressive. It gets people to bay
Speaker 2: authority because the family's a first cell of fascist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, holy shit, I forgot about that.
Speaker 2: What he's right about is what Hegel kind of says
Speaker 2: in the philosophy of right is that the family is
Speaker 2: the first cell of the state. And unless you think
Speaker 2: you can live with no state, then you'd think that
Speaker 2: view is ridiculous. I think the idea of like the
Speaker 2: family is.
Speaker 1: Where ideology is shaped for Reich.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, but this is this is the kind
Speaker 2: of thing this anti this pro hetero, this anti authority,
Speaker 2: this blanket anti authority politics.
Speaker 1: It's just having sexually repressive parents. What's more authoritarian? Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: A lot of people who find themselves attracted to politics
Speaker 2: that are, you know, against all authority as such. And
Speaker 2: often you see this a lot in the way some
Speaker 2: of the left intellectuals who are on this sort of
Speaker 2: side like to use Nietzsche. They like to use Nietzsche
Speaker 2: and kind of forget about as aristocratic hierarchical politics and
Speaker 2: just take the kind of anti authority part and you know,
Speaker 2: embrace that kind of like Adulus doayes this actually, you know,
Speaker 2: and how he uses Nietzsche, And a lot of the
Speaker 2: people who find themselves attracted to this sort of thing,
Speaker 2: they think in their own shoes and that's it. They think, well,
Speaker 2: you know, I can, I can be a free thinking
Speaker 2: individual and I'm perfectly fine without any authority structures. You know.
Speaker 2: It's to say that everyone can't be can be like that,
Speaker 2: And it's like, one, you're probably an adult. Two, if
Speaker 2: you are a kid, this would be bad. Three. Also,
Speaker 2: not everyone is like you. This is the thing that
Speaker 2: a lot of people who are intellectuals get attracted to
Speaker 2: this politics because they are by default people who are
Speaker 2: inclined to this sort of freethinking, free spirited view. Not
Speaker 2: everyone wants to be like that. Not everyone wants to
Speaker 2: be like that for everything in every matter. Like I'll
Speaker 2: give you an example. I'm very like, you know, forward thinking,
Speaker 2: free thinking on political matters, intellectual matters. But when it
Speaker 2: comes to like I don't know, deciding where to eat
Speaker 2: or deciding certain thing. I prefer other people decide. I like.
Speaker 2: I love it when people decide, you know. I love
Speaker 2: it when someone who knows their shit about something just
Speaker 2: goes and does it.
Speaker 3: Last night, I decided we go to Patua.
Speaker 4: You know, which is a good A good Jamaican Asian
Speaker 4: fusion restaurant in Toronto anyway, Okay.
Speaker 2: Sorry, you just docks to everybody, dude, Anyway, They're great.
Speaker 2: The broader point here is about authority. I don't think
Speaker 2: authority is inherently bad. I really don't. It's a matter
Speaker 2: of better authority and the outcomes that it leads to
Speaker 2: some people who find themselves attracted to like just anti
Speaker 2: authority politics. It went well with neoliberalism, partially because you know,
Speaker 2: when you get this crackdown on the welfare state that
Speaker 2: comes largely from the right, starting already with the seventies,
Speaker 2: but you have, like, at the same time, the new
Speaker 2: left politics is so anti bureaucracy, and part of that's
Speaker 2: you know, legitimated, Like it's part of that's legitimate and
Speaker 2: that there is a real critique of bureaucracy. But it'll
Speaker 2: have as like libertarian politics that actually mesh very well
Speaker 2: with the new spirit of capitalism. You know, the new
Speaker 2: spirit of capitalism was all about getting government off your back,
Speaker 2: about delegating stuff to the market. I think sometimes man like,
Speaker 2: because I had never found the systems of the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union appealing. If I was alive in the sixties, I
Speaker 2: could see myself getting going from a you know, new
Speaker 2: leftist to a you know, neoliberal. I mean, a lot
Speaker 2: of left ease became neoliberals. That is a fact. In fact,
Speaker 2: there's this book called the left Wing Origins of Neoliberalism
Speaker 2: that's about how a lot of like people used to
Speaker 2: be like full on Marxist Soviet sympathizers, and after they
Speaker 2: got disenfranchised, they thought, well, you know what, maybe the
Speaker 2: market is the way to a freer society, maybe even
Speaker 2: a socialist society, because you have like this, it's more
Speaker 2: liberating than the state. And it's we look back on
Speaker 2: that like, oh, that's like a you know, I would
Speaker 2: never believe that, But I don't know. Man. The way
Speaker 2: the the left has marked pro I would call like
Speaker 2: the dominant form of feminism today market feminism gender ideology,
Speaker 2: This idea of choosing a million genders it's so marketized.
Speaker 2: Think about it like the marketplace of genders, the marketplace
Speaker 2: of ideologies.
Speaker 1: I don't know, that's a that's a tough one. That's
Speaker 1: a tough one. I think there's a difference between.
Speaker 4: Your sciritu agree by the woke mob.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: I think there's a difference between trying to like analyze
Speaker 1: what's going on in any of these situations and then
Speaker 1: navigating the distinction between facts and values, which can never
Speaker 1: really be separated. But it's not like every time we're
Speaker 1: describing something, we're also advocating a very specific solution to it, right,
Speaker 1: just like what opened us up with the housing thing. Right,
Speaker 1: Like we would all agree on affordability, but maybe not
Speaker 1: all of us would agree that freezing housing prices is
Speaker 1: the pathway to affordability in that in at least in
Speaker 1: where housing comes into it. But I think also, you know,
Speaker 1: saying okay, all these genders and reflects some kind of
Speaker 1: market ideology, and then even that, what's the problem with that?
Speaker 1: There's there's a certain level of analysis lackings that I
Speaker 1: can't agree or disagree with statements like that because I
Speaker 1: just don't know what the fuck, where the fuck they're
Speaker 1: even coming from and what the problem is in the
Speaker 1: first place. But anyway, that is to say, I don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to the gender stuff there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess do we want to mentions?
Speaker 4: Talk about Zoran a bit like because I'm you know,
Speaker 4: as a as a student of political as a doctor
Speaker 4: in the philosophy of political science, I was looking into it.
Speaker 4: What power does the mayor have in New York in general,
Speaker 4: Like for the mayor to be able to do any
Speaker 4: of his core policies, he would need at least some
Speaker 4: funding authority from from the state government. And this and
Speaker 4: the governor I forget her name, Hochel or something like that.
Speaker 4: Maybe I'm mixing it up. She basically said, like she's
Speaker 4: not going to increase taxes on anyone, like she just said,
Speaker 4: and because she's been asked like, are you gonna do
Speaker 4: the things that are necessary for like him to implement
Speaker 4: his policy to for example, create like a like childcare
Speaker 4: in New York City, like she would need to or
Speaker 4: he would need to appropriate like funding, and the only
Speaker 4: way that he can do that is by going to
Speaker 4: the state capitol.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: And so I was just saying, like that's not going
Speaker 4: to happen. So like his core policy is just not
Speaker 4: not realistic. It's not because I'm not in favor of them,
Speaker 4: it's just about like the institutional reality that like then
Speaker 4: that there's only so much that the New York Mayor
Speaker 4: can do. I mean, maybe he can so to freeze
Speaker 4: rents he needs so, I know that there's like something
Speaker 4: called like the Rental rate like review board in New
Speaker 4: York City, and the mayor does have the power to
Speaker 4: appoint those members, but the mayor can't directly like freeze rents.
Speaker 2: He would need to.
Speaker 4: Get that board to agree to freeze rents. And he's
Speaker 4: not allowed to fire people from the board unless it's
Speaker 4: for misconduct, so like he would have to like if so,
Speaker 4: you know, he would have to find an excuse to
Speaker 4: fire all the members of the board and then implement
Speaker 4: his own who are going to promise to freeze rents.
Speaker 4: So it's just like those are just like the kinds
Speaker 4: of fine institutional details that I was looking at. I
Speaker 4: was like, well, it's his platform is just like not
Speaker 4: gonna fucking happen.
Speaker 1: So and no matter how much she feels like kind
Speaker 1: of a breath of fresh air and a real turn
Speaker 1: and at least like municipal politics and or even a
Speaker 1: real turn in politics and the Democratic Party.
Speaker 4: We need a new system in san Antoni will agree
Speaker 4: with me.
Speaker 3: We need sortition, we needs.
Speaker 1: The other problem here though, is another a concept called
Speaker 1: interpassivity that that comes up here in this text. And interpassivity. Well,
Speaker 1: he's talking about the film, Wally, but it's a broader point, right,
Speaker 1: So he says about it that the film, it is
Speaker 1: a great film. The film performs are anti capitalism for us.
Speaker 1: It's a it's an eco catastrophe movie.
Speaker 2: He brings up.
Speaker 1: So what but and it's a great film, and he
Speaker 1: has some criticisms of it, But what he wants to
Speaker 1: get out is this concept interpassivity, which means capitalism anti
Speaker 1: The film performs are anti capitalism for us, allowing us
Speaker 1: to continue to consume with impunity. And so this is
Speaker 1: the problem when and we you even get this even
Speaker 1: from more like Marxist, like more more even like more
Speaker 1: hardline leftists, is like, well, I'm not I'm against Zorin
Speaker 1: because he's not like radical enough. He's not he's not
Speaker 1: a true Marxist. He has critiques of capitalism, but there
Speaker 1: are critiques from within capitalists and.
Speaker 3: Blah, blah blah.
Speaker 1: He's not enough, and he's ultimately damaging because he's going
Speaker 1: to perform. I don't know, that's almost seems like he could.
Speaker 1: And Victor's skeptical attitude may then be appropriate. Here is
Speaker 1: that Zorin could put us into this interpassive state where
Speaker 1: because the problem is, you know, this spectacle of him
Speaker 1: winning could be taken as oh, great, I don't need
Speaker 1: to do anything anymore. I don't need to get out
Speaker 1: there and support him because he's going to do my
Speaker 1: anti capitalism for me. And whether or not he does
Speaker 1: is obviously just a question that has to be left
Speaker 1: to the future. But it goes to the broader point
Speaker 1: that when you have fascism, when you have communism, you
Speaker 1: need propaganda with those things you need to argue. But
Speaker 1: he's saying here, the role of capitalist this is a quote,
Speaker 1: the role of capitalist ideology is not to make explicit
Speaker 1: and explicit case for something in the world that propaganda does,
Speaker 1: but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital
Speaker 1: don't depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief. Capitalism
Speaker 1: doesn't need you to believe it works for it to work,
Speaker 1: and apparently, according to this argument, Fascism and communism are
Speaker 1: things that require you to believe them to work for
Speaker 1: them to work. So in capitalism and capitalist realism, you
Speaker 1: can have this state where I don't believe money is real,
Speaker 1: but I act as if it is, or I don't
Speaker 1: believe this works, but I act as if it does work. Right,
Speaker 1: you get into this Capitalism capitalist realism is this unique
Speaker 1: situation that produces that. And the danger of interpassivity is,
Speaker 1: you know, whenever any spectacle comes along like Zorin winning
Speaker 1: or the squad winning or Burnie gaining ground, right, the
Speaker 1: danger is that it can relax us into passivity because
Speaker 1: it's like we see, it's obviously the media system that
Speaker 1: we're not going unless you're going in person to their
Speaker 1: rallies and hearing them speak. You're probably getting this information
Speaker 1: from the media. So you have a spectacle of anti
Speaker 1: capitalism and you relax and say everything's good, and you
Speaker 1: pay attention to something else. You go back to, you
Speaker 1: resume your Lord of the Rings movie or whatever you
Speaker 1: were watching.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a performative ritual at this point, like
Speaker 2: in art galleries or a lot of these artistic events
Speaker 2: where people will say and then then that's why laid capitalism.
Speaker 2: I see a lot of video essayists. It's strange, like
Speaker 2: there's this interesting thing where like bread tube started, Like
Speaker 2: this category of bread tube is this fascinating thing on
Speaker 2: YouTube because it includes a lot of channels that are
Speaker 2: frankly aren't very political at all. But every now and then,
Speaker 2: and they're like three hour long analysis of Harry Potter
Speaker 2: or whatever film or video game, they'll say something something
Speaker 2: late capitalism, and it's almost like a ritual and that's
Speaker 2: the disavowal you mentioned, you know, like this fetishistic disavowal,
Speaker 2: which is to be like, yeah, I acknowledge it, but
Speaker 2: you know, whatever is Usually he talks a lot about this.
Speaker 2: How like the way in which Mao is China would
Speaker 2: deal with criticism, you know, like in Dissent, he quotes
Speaker 2: Mao at a meeting, how he would say, okay, guys,
Speaker 2: whatever criticisms you have of our party, just shit it out.
Speaker 2: Let it out like a shit. And the way describing
Speaker 2: it like a shit, like just get it out, like
Speaker 2: just out of the way so we can move on
Speaker 2: life as usual. It is kind of the way we
Speaker 2: treat like sometimes like our ritualistic anti capitalism. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like okay, you know, yeah, it's bad whatever, not
Speaker 2: think about it.
Speaker 1: Capitalism itself is the biggest purveyor of anti capitalism. Yeah, capitalism,
Speaker 1: like movies, music, or the cultural sphere is full of
Speaker 1: anti capitalist messages. Reality shows are a good example of
Speaker 1: all this postfortist and capitalist realist stuff too, because reality
Speaker 1: shows are something that are affected by what they say,
Speaker 1: which is an interesting situation. So it's like what you
Speaker 1: say is real also somehow affects what is real. And
Speaker 1: I guess the point is, you know, you can have
Speaker 1: a reality show and then the audience can react, and
Speaker 1: you can incorporate audience reactions back into the supposedly realistic
Speaker 1: and unscripted show, and there's a feedback loop between what
Speaker 1: people are saying and what is happening, and then so
Speaker 1: what is real in that circuit, like it becomes a
Speaker 1: little less clear. And that matches the point too of
Speaker 1: interpassivity and the fact that capitalist ideology doesn't require a
Speaker 1: case to be made for it. In fact, capitalist ideology
Speaker 1: works best when you're not making a case for it,
Speaker 1: and so you can behave in whatever way you want,
Speaker 1: you know, as long as you believe this is all bullshit,
Speaker 1: then you can still do it. And I'm sure every
Speaker 1: Silicone Valley capitalist.
Speaker 2: Is like that.
Speaker 1: You know, oh, I know money is completely just paper
Speaker 1: and worthless and or just bits on a computer. Now
Speaker 1: if you're talking about those people, But I'm gonna act.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna conduct my life as of getting as much
Speaker 1: of this ship as possible is the most important thing.
Speaker 2: So there you go. My prediction is they're gonna get
Speaker 2: a huge return of trad culture, but it's gonna be
Speaker 2: super commodified and ironic, and it's gonna be totally ineffective.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be a bunch of people who are like,
Speaker 2: I'm a trad cath. Now you already see what the
Speaker 2: likes of like red Scare podcast, where they're like they
Speaker 2: consider themselves to be trad cath but are they really though,
Speaker 2: And you know, you people who will like flaunt the
Speaker 2: kind of like crosses, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: they'll do the same stuff and nothing will change. Capitalism
Speaker 2: will continue.
Speaker 4: Do you think there's gonna be any growth of real
Speaker 4: trad Like do you think that your generation's gonna have
Speaker 4: gonna have kids sooner like our zoomers? Do you think
Speaker 4: zoomers are gonna have kids, maybe uh sooner than millennials.
Speaker 2: I don't think they'll have a choice. It's not like
Speaker 2: it's they can barely buy a house. Yeah, that's forget
Speaker 2: having forget having kids.
Speaker 4: So the trend's gonna the trend will conte.
Speaker 2: Look. I have friends who have master's degrees in like
Speaker 2: engineering and chemistry, and like, really, you know, you would
Speaker 2: think employable, employable degrees, and they can't even find a job.
Speaker 2: It's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: True.
Speaker 1: I would expect the family structure to continue to be
Speaker 1: challenged under capitalism, as as Fisher's saying here as we're seeing,
Speaker 1: and I would not be surprised if trad came back,
Speaker 1: because a lot of what trad is is just kind
Speaker 1: of playing house right, like like very traditional family roles, childbearing,
Speaker 1: stay at home wife, brett winning father, like kind of
Speaker 1: this nostalgia for Fordism. It is a it is a
Speaker 1: it's a fortist fantasy. I'm sure it'll get stronger if
Speaker 1: things continue in the direction they're going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. I think that's interesting. Well, I think
Speaker 3: that was a good episode, guys.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening everyone.
Speaker 1: And yeah, thanks for indulging my choice.
Speaker 3: It was good.
Speaker 4: I think if we really never talked about or never
Speaker 4: covered a capitalist realism on an early episode. I'm glad
Speaker 4: we did, and even if we did, it was probably
Speaker 4: appropriate to revisit it. Tune in next week for Kim
Speaker 4: Jong Pills to be back back in the driver's seat,
Speaker 4: and do check out Tony's YouTube channel one dime and
Speaker 4: his podcast one Diime Radio. And yeah, we'll leave it
Speaker 4: at that.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: We should thank our guests for joining us, Thank you
Speaker 1: for Ross for that.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, I went substitute teacher and didn't get bullied.
Speaker 1: All right, win win, all right, chow stop recording